An Indictment of Potter Geekdom

Let me start by saying my original intentions with this post were to catalogue the various geek subcultures, not attack just one.  The more I wrote however, the more I found myself coming back to Harry Potter fans.  I can't explain why.  Perhaps it's because Triumph has already seen to dismantling the credibility of Star Wars  nerds.  Maybe it's because sports geeks come off as mind-numbingly one-dimensional excuses for human beings.  Or maybe it's simply because I don't know anyone who actually plays Dungeons & Dragons un-ironically.

Whatever the reason, in keeping with my never-ending quest to rip-off Cracked articles, I shall air all grievances l'esprit de listed crap:

1. "Not my Potter, you bitch!"

Maybe I've got a perceived bias, and that's why this point is the first -- and admittedly the weakest -- on this list.  Harry Potter fans are obnoxious.  How many Facebook invites to Harry Potter marathons have you received in last year?  Let's sit around for two nights drinking and crying about how we should all feel bad for Snape.  I'll pass.

My theory is it comes down to quantity with so damn many of those people.  To Rowling's credit, there's a wide-ranging appeal to this material. My mom likes Harry Potter for Christ's sake.  But perhaps it's best to let this zealotry phase itself out.  That Death Eater symbol's gonna look like a skull puking out a wiener after twenty years.  So live it up, bra.

2. It's glorified Young Adult fiction.

I am by no means undermining J.K. Rowling's success.  She's managed to craft a hugely successful fantasy franchise with memorable characters and moments.  Not to mention Rowling's prose is considerably more accessible than someone like Tolkien's.  And that's because Harry Potter is middle school fiction.  Really, really great middle school fiction at that.  The juvenile qualities of the series, especially in the first three, fade away as both Harry and the larger story arc matures.  Hey, wait a minute...

On the other hand, there's absolutely nothing profound or literary about that Epilogue.

Rowling apparently had the ending planned out for years and (presumably) crafted the resolution of the story to match that endpoint.  Drawing from my two semesters worth of creative writing experience which is clearly paying off in dividends, that strikes me as a very flawed system.  The thing reads like a piece of fan fiction.  I mean come on. "Albus Severus?"  Yeeeesh.  It's wish fulfillment at its most pungent.

Then again, J.K. Rowling is the one sitting on her silk-covered toilet, wiping her ass with rolls of crisp Franklins.  So what do I know?

Nah.  It's still pretty awful.

3. Harry Potter has all the womenses.

This isn't as shallow as it sounds.  Off the top of your head, I'd bet twenty galleons you could name five females who've gone to a Potter screening at midnight.  Now do that same exercise, except replace Potter with Star Trek.  How many females went and saw Revenge of the Sith premiere?  Thor?  I'll take "Not Too Fucking Many" for 200, Alex.

Run a Google Image search on this.  Not only will more females pop up on those Harry Potter results, but they'll likely be more attractive.  Obviously this doesn't qualify the strength or weakness of anything, but it certainly doesn't hurt either.

I think I know why, too.  Harry Potter does a better job of integrating the romance stuff.  No, not that all women need requited love in their successful multi-billion dollar franchises, but for the more casual viewer, my maternal unit for example, it certainly helps.

Second -- and this is going to sound bad so I'll make things even worse by letting it hang for a while -- being a Harry Potter nerd doesn't require a great deal of commitment.  Consider other areas of geekdom with extremely high numbers of female fans like Twilight or The Hunger Games.  Maybe I'm trying too hard to make this work but the breadth of content is pretty limited in terms of any commitment.  Harry Potter provides a geeky outlet for those people who don't have the time or patience for all the extra stuff. It's the toilet travel kit of pop culture franchises if you will.  'No, no.  I don't want to hear about any Headmaster succession.  I'll take my happy ending and be right on m'way.'

As promised, I'll qualify this more in a bit, but for now: THASS SEXISSS

Just to be clear, I'm not counting the throngs of half-models that weasel their way into Comic-Con every year with metal bikini outfits.   Posers, I tell ye.

You disgust me. 

4. The costumes suck.

Quality costume design does not concern how "sexy" you can alter something for a Halloween frat party, but this naivete has got to stop.  It's time to admit there is absolutely nothing appealing about long black cloaks and pointy hats.

Anyone else notice that, at least as the films progress, the role of the hats sort of just disappear?  All the Prefects from Sorcerer's Stone -- including Percy Weasley in all of his prissy doucheness -- tried and failed to rock the shit out of that.  And for good reason.  They look fucking stupid.

What is that thing?  It looks like a blackened flesh sock permanently locked in some sort of mind-controlling erectile death grip.  Even 'ole Proffy McGonagall, whom you could argue has the most central relationship to this odious headgear, presumably tosses hers in some charming magical version of a back alley dumpster.

I will give the 'ole Warner Bros. execs their due credit for clearly realizing how fucking stupid those costumes would look on anyone over the age of 15.  The last three promotional posters are proof:

Last time I checked, there wasn't a Hot Topic in Diagon Alley.  What this costume business really boils down to is fans trying way too hard and still failing.  The wizard cloak and hat thing isn't anywhere close to being as cool as Klingon armor or an ensign's Enterprise uniform.  


But more to the point here, in the great equalizer of sex, the location of either of those Trek costumes is likely in the complete opposite direction of a boob.  

5. Canon? What canon?

The central part of geekdom involves becoming ridiculously well-versed in a very specific subset of pop culture.   Sports nerds don't just who know the Hartford Whalers were; they know the fucking jersey numbers of the 1993 roster. In other words, there's a real heft to obsession in geekdom.  And Harry Potter doesn't fit the bill.

Like Twilight and or The Hunger Games, you can read all seven HP books (and maybe that fairy tale spin-off thing) and be done.  Take a week's worth of sick leave, and you'll have mastered the Wonderful World of Hogwarts by Friday.  It's worth noting that Suzanne Collins and Stephanie Meyer also write young adult fiction, too.

To better illustrate this, just look at how WB stretched out the last book as much as possible.  Some might argue it was done for artistic reasons.  I can see that. But eight films also lets you make a shit ton of money.

To be fair, Lucasfilm has been pulling this exact same stunt since 1997.  The difference is that the Star Wars Universe doesn't stop there.  After Luke, Leia, Han and their army of midget teddy bears defeat the Empire forever, there's a continual volley of poorly-written novels, video games, and one (soon to be two) television programs to follow.  One might say it's a constantly expanding universe (ha!). Harry Potter fans have seven books.  That's bush league.

Then we come to the topic of originality.  J.K Rowling's infraction?  Language, dear readers.

Let's take what will assuredly be the first of many, many theoretical linguistics tangents to come in future posts.  The following is a list of selected curses and spells from Harry Potter:

Crucio
Descendo
Engorgio
Erecto
Flagrato
Reparo
Avada Kedavra


Now just taking a cursory glance at that -- excuse me, casting a cursorio charm on that list -- you can probably make a solid guess as to what most of them mean.  "Crucio" inflicts severe pain for the receiver of the spell.  Like a crucifixion, maybe?  "Avada kedavra" kills you i.e. turns you into a ca-daver.  See what she did there?  Sadly, "erecto" is not what you're thinking.  It's actually much more disappointing.

Those spells read like a failed Latin midterm, and they're just the examples I happened to choose.  There be plenty more.  Professor Remus Lupin turns into a werewolf (canis lupus is the Latin identification for wolf species).  Sirius Black has the power to transform into a dog (and the star Sirius is nicknamed the "dog star").

In the interest of fairness, virtually every franchise suffers from something in this regard.  George R.R. Martin has an infatuation with re-spelling common European first names.  And let's not forget that "Darth Sidious" is about as shitty of an alias you can think of for a corrupt Senator to hide behind.  Star Wars rips off Joseph Campbell and virtually every modern myth that loosely follows the hero cycle; Battlestar Galactica rips off Star Wars, etc.  It's a horribly vicious circle of redundancy.

I am well aware that this could all be misconstrued as one giant lamentation about hipsterdom, but I think the honest form of geekery died around ten years ago.  Or it was always just a pretentious way of living in the first place and the "original" geeks are just a bunch of closeted, self-righteous pricks.

That's enough ranting, Potter fans.  Please resume all sexing and fun-having.

* * *

The Blessings of Happenstance

A song came up on my iTunes shuffle the other day.

This one.

"Yub Nub" - John Williams (1983)




In the original 1983 release of Return of the Jedi, "Yub Nub" signals the finale of the Original Trilogy.  It wraps everything up and gives the audience a sense of closure.  There's that great sequence of Luke at Vader's funeral pyre with Williams' "May the Force Be With You" echoing in the background.  We don't just get a sense of how far Luke has come in this story, but also how far he's changed as a character.  The camera pans up to the Endor skyline as starfighters and fireworks dance across the sky in equal measure.  And then... stormtrooper helmet drum solo?

It doesn't work at all.

Forget the song's terrible title.  Almost seven hours of sweeping galactic space fantasy and this is what they settle on for resolution?  Bad bad bad.  Meeting Chewie's family during the Holiday Special bad.

I wish I could say this was Photoshopped.  I really do.

What's the deal with the creepy man-child chorus?  Who is singing this anyway?  This is less "Ewok" and more "neutered group of estranged choir singers forced at gunpoint."

Context is key here.  The Rebel Alliance just blew up the Death Star.  Again.  Luke resisted the temptations of the dark side and with the help of his newly redeemed father, destroyed the Emperor.  The film should end with something that reflects that.  "Yub Nub" sounds like Rogue Squadron stumbled home after a kegger and immediately started banging on the contents of their trash compactors.  Imagine Aragorn's coronation ceremony being held in the Green Dragon instead of Minas Tirith.  "Yub Nub" is not quite at this level of inappropriateness, but it's pretty damn close.

Fortunately, things get better.

"Victory Celebration" - John Williams (1997)

George Lucas gets a lot of shit for messing with his movies.  That's no secret.  Despite that, "Victory Celebration " stands as his one (and likely only) change that makes sense.

The err... original version, which came attached to 1997's VHS Special Edition release, featured a brand new piece written by John Williams along with a slew of digitally-rendered cityscapes.  That meant we got to see the crucial planets of the saga.  Yes, that inevitably meant adding Naboo at some point, but hey we also get Tatooine, Cloud City, and of course Coruscant.  The scourge of the galaxy has just been vanquished.  It stands to reason that we should revisit some of the saga's more memorable locales.  It's our right, dammit!

And then there's the score.  This new version keeps that same tribal inspiration from "Yub Nub" but doesn't make it corny.  And whereas the former is essentially everyone singing one melody, this has layers.  It's a bit more complex, and while I won't try arguing there's a whole mound of subtext to unpack with Return of the Jedi's ending, "Victory Celebration" is clearly a change for the better.

None of which is to say I endorse the slew of implications the updated scene brings with it.  The most obviously caustic is slapping Hayden's mug on Anakin's ghost with the added defense that all Jedi spirits appear in their true form.

But that doesn't make any sense because Anakin fucking repented as an old man anyway.  GAHHH now I'm mad again.

A Bit of Oscars Housekeeping

On December 5, 2011, Ron Santo was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, nearly a year after his death. A Cubs third baseman for most of his career, Santo long went unrecognized for his talents by fans and writers alike.  Then something changed.  Santo, who had first been Hall of Fame eligible in 1980, started garnering more support.  Thanks to the help of advanced baseball statistics and a growing contingent of sabermetricians, Ron Santo has come to be seen as a vastly overlooked player.  But what exactly changed the BWAA's opinion of his 15 major league seasons?  More importantly, why did it take 31 years of eligibility to figure it out?

Hindsight thinking is a great example of how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences operates. I'm of the opinion that self-congratulatory awards--baseball, film or otherwise--are better off admitting their inherent subjectivity and recognizing themselves more as "glorified museums."   I guess that would make the Oscars a kind of televised museum, except the exihibits change every year and instead of a History major your tour guide is a singing Hugh Jackman.

The reason for pushing this museum stuff is simple: AMPAS screws up. A lot.  You can find hundreds of articles on Oscar "snubs" where Forrest Gump miraculously beat Shawshank and Pulp Fiction or 2009's BAND-AID system whereby the ballot could be expanded to ten possible Best Picture nominees.

Also this happened.

These mistakes aren't just outside personal opinion either. AMPAS has essentially admitted it themselves, indirectly at least:

As if it wasn't glaringly obvious whom the award was going to (I don't think Spielberg even read what was on the card), you can play the Which "New Hollywood" Director is Missing From the Dais Game and figure it out.  Scorsese kind of just throws his hands in the air like whoopdie frickin' doo.  Yes, The Departed is fantastic, but the Academy chooses to honor him now?  Not for Taxi Driver or Raging Bull? Goodfellas?


In Scorsese's case, AMPAS recognized (albeit through the power of hindsight) that it had more or less messed up in acknowledging one director's work over that of John G. Avildsen's.  Fixing past blunders is an inevitability here; somebody's probably going to get left out with only one Best Picture award.  Scorsese's Best Director was a product of that.  So was Charlie Chaplin's Honorary Oscar 40 years ago.

If you don't skip through the first two-and-a-half minutes, you'll notice the introduction is essentially a primer to Chaplin's career, and to a certain extent, a brief history lesson in early cinema.  The award is informative as much as it is celebratory.  And that's essentially how a museum works.  Every so often the sinking of the Titanic is commemorated with a special exhibit, but you can also learn the differences between a diplodocus and a brachiosaurus.  That's why the Academy ought to do one of two things next year:

A) Punt its rapidly declining respectability and become the "Grammys of film."  Awards would take a back seat to entertainment, complete with comedy sketches and a James Franco chorus line.

or...

B) Completely overhaul the current awards system.

We've seen what happens with the first option.  I find the alternative much more intriguing, so when I say "overhaul" I mean tear the whole thing down and build it back up.  Here are some starting points:

3. Get Rid of the Best Director Award

The following is a list of Best Picture winners for each theatrical year since 1990.  It's also a list of the Best Director winners:

Dances With Wolves (1990)
The Silence of The Lambs (1991)
Unforgiven (1992)
Schindler's List (1993)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Braveheart (1995)
The English Patient (1996)
Titanic (1997)
Shakespeare in Love (1998) X
American Beauty (1999)
Gladiator (2000) X
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Chicago (2002) X
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Crash (2005) X
The Departed (2006)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
The Hurt Locker (2009)
The King's Speech (2010)

Those red x's indicate the years in which the Best Picture film was not the same as the Best Director film.  So for the past 21 Oscar ceremonies, only 4 films haven't won both.

The nominations for Best Director are submitted specifically by the Academy's directing board, which makes sense. What doesn't is that voting is expanded and everyone gets their say on the winner.  Specialize the process so the people choosing are the same ones voting.  Unless the rest of the Academy is too stupid to pick nominations for themselves, and this is how directors secretly shepherd Gerard Butler away from choosing Roland Emmerich every year.  Prove that Best Director actually means something.  Or, you know, get rid of it.

As hard as it may be to believe, the Golden Globes actually do something right by dividing certain awards between Drama and Comedy/Musical.  The Hollywood Foreign Press Association still hasn't defined the differences between them, but specialization is a step in the right direction.  What makes a World War II period drama any better than a smartly-directed comedy?  It's nice that the Academy has a Best PIXAR Animated Feature, but where's the value in that if Toy Story 3 getting a Best Picture nod is more impressive?

Neither Best Picture nor Best Animated Feature 

matter to John Lasseter and his fleet of chocolate-

covered yachts.

2. Ditch the Secrecy as a Shield For Backwards Thinking

A big part of the problem is the Academy's conservative thinking.  It's perfectly reasonable to claim there are certain qualities that make an Oscar-worthy film:

Dramas.  Period pieces.  Genocide is a plus, but don't forget to pull a love story out of it.  It's okay to be violent, but ease up on the gore.  You can't go wrong with a comforting message.  Meryl Streep.

I'm not suggesting the Academy send a couple noms in The Human Centipede's direction, but in that aforementioned list, how many times did the Academy "mess up?"  There's a clear critical consensus that AMPAS has been historically behind the curve on this thing.  The Artist is the favorite to win Best All Of The Things this year.  But why?  An award for best of...well, anything ought to stand for some thing.  Personal opinion abounds, but it's reasonable to think "best" means creative or innovative or thought provoking in some way.  What "best" shouldn't represent is a rehash of stuff we've already seen 80 years ago.  And done much better for that matter.  In this sense, I don't think 2012 has as much of a clear cut winner as last year's The Social Network The King's Speech.  I personally found The Artist quite charming.  It's a cute story, but does it really say anything important?  In twenty years, will we view it as a historically significant piece of cinema?  A lot of people seem to think so.  Just don't ask me who they are.

As much as I would love to point the finger over the Internet, AMPAS is worse than the Illuminati with revealing the exact makeup of its 6,000+ members.  Fortunately the Los Angeles Times came out with an interesting breakdown of Oscar voters.  To summarize, 20% of its members are actors, while only 6% are directors.  The median age is also 61, which might have something to do with that safe, bourgeois mindset.  At the same time, there's also no set list of criteria for joining as far as I can tell.  Dakota Fanning was invited to join when she was only 12.

A friggin tween has a say in this shit.

1. Let's Start Playing the Blame Game!

A friend of mine has repeatedly suggested that the Heisman Trust release its balloting information after the award is handed out each year.  I love this idea.  I love this idea so much in fact that I think the Academy should use it and go one step further.  Don't just show us how many votes each film won.  Show us who voted so we can track down all the morons and beat them incessantly with copies of What About Steve.

Apparently Best Foreign Language Film and Best Documentary Feature aren't even on the official Oscar ballot.  You have to call in, tell the Academy you've seen all five films (which is presumably verified through a top secret, air-tight reliability system), and then you receive a special ballot just for that category which only then can you use to vote.  In other words, the people who are voting for Best Foreign Language film are the same people who have a vested interest in the category in the first place.

I see absolutely no way in which that system could be exploited.

It gets way more messed up, though.  Many members admit to not even having seen all of the nominated films.  In all honesty, I can't blame them.  These Hollywood big shots lead such public lives attending charities, fundraisers, and social events that it's unrealistic to expect Steve Carell to sit down and stay on top of all the possible Best Picture films.  SO LET'S ADD FIVE MORE TO THE BALLOT.

Yes, it's probably naive to think the Academy would publicize every ballot the week after awards are given.  But what if we waited a decade or two and then unlocked the vault?  Like what the CIA is going to do with JFK's assassination papers or whatever.  Tell me you wouldn't enjoy all the finger-pointing sessions on Access Hollywood.

"You see? It's her fault Dark Knight got the shaft! 

Now tell us why you wrote in Daddy Day Camp, you flaxen-

haired urchin!"

* * *

As with most years, the Oscars of 2012 promise to piss off somebody.  The producers behind Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close apparently made a generous enough "donation."  There's also the Academy's baffling decision to only nominate nine films, omitting Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive in the process.  It might be a strong language thing or too much blood.  Either way it seems unfair to ignore such a well-made homage to retro cinema.

Then again, the Academy clearly has a preference, so should we really be surprised when allusions to an older genre and minimal dialogue don't make the cut?

"The Death and Return of Superman"

This short film by Max Landis is exactly what I would do if I could replace "crappy blog" with things like "talent" and "creativity."

"One Does Not Simply Adapt a Modern Epic"

Per my recent re-obsession with Tolkien's mythos/avoiding social contact with another human being, I ventured into the danker, smellier regions of the digital underworld this past week and downloaded Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated (and incomplete) adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

"Incomplete" is important here, because the film actually ends halfway through the The Two Towers after the battle of Helm's Deep.  Regardless of how many films Bakshi intended on making, the decision to end the first installment here is a curious one.  Like Peter Jackson's adaptations, many elements of Tolkien's story are omitted and with the Bakshi version's runtime clocking in at 133 minutes, even less of the original arc remains intact.  When sections aren't completely removed they're still often breezed over, like a silent narrator skimming through instead of reading carefully.  As a result, there are very few dramatic beats that don't feel clumsy.

What's immediately striking about this version is the huge difference in its interpretation of the source material.  I'd like to just crack jokes, but the effect is really much more humorous when you see for yourself.

Who the Hell is Aruman?

Gandalf the Nag

Admittedly, it's pretty hard to screw up Gandalf.  Pointy hat. Cloak.  Beard.  The problem isn't with his appearance so much as his temperament as he tends to concern himself more with finger-pointing and lecturing than actually providing assistance.


Nazgul

This one's not completely ridiculous, though the extent to which the Ringwraiths are actually "animated" varies wildly.  Instead of carrying an ominous presence like their Jacksonian counterparts, these Ringwraiths slither in an unsettling manner like No Face in "Spirited Away." Nevertheless, "cloaked in black" and "screaming" is probably enough to point them out in a police lineup.

Samwise

Sam is where we start running into discrepancies.  While I freely admit that Jackson's might have been too forgiving and sentimental a depiction of Frodo's gardener, Bakshi's is egregiously simplistic in the worst way.  I cannot imagine how this gap-toothed moron, with his constant stuttering and wining, could remember which end of his pipe to light, let alone remind himself to tend to someone's garden on a regular basis.  Fantasy indeed.

Aragorn

Blame Bakshi's "Sicilian wrestler" interpretation on the fashion zeitgeist of the time.  I guess.  At least he's voiced by John Hurt.

Saruman of Many Colors

Jackson's design team copped out with Saruman and his ever-changing colors by simply dressing him in a white cloak.  Here, Bakshi chooses to call him Saruman of Many Colors (which is perfectly accurate) and dressing him in... red.

The worst part about Saruman of Many Colors (When He Feels Like It) is this "Aruman" business.  Bakshi & co. tried changing his name to "Aruman," undoubtedly because it sounds so similar to Sauron, which wouldn't seem so bad if the voice actors actually remembered this:

That has to be the worst wizard "battle" of all time.  Nearly limitless power at your command and how do you use it?  By putting on a Pink Floyd laser show.  This name change business makes for such a jarring experience that by the time the Fellowship left Rivendell, I paused my computer and thought I was hearing things:

"That would take the Ring too close to Isengard.  And Aruman!"

Elrond

Elrond is quite puzzling because he looks no different than Aragorn.  Nor any other man for that matter.  With that haircut you can't even tell he's an elf by looking at his ears.  Why's this guy so special?  You'd think the Elves would have the foresight to boot him from Rivendell after refusing to change that damn white t-shirt.

Balrog

The Balrog is a genius combination of lion, man and condor.  In no way does it resemble some underpaid extra walking around wearing recycled Halloween costumes and cracking a whip.

Boromir

Giml-- err Boromir is by far the worst interpretation here.  Forget that he looks more like a dwarf than a man; since when is the city of Gondor the fantasy equivalent of medieval Oslo?  This is how you envision an ambassador of man's last hope?  On second thought, just give the Ring back to Sauron.

Animated Lord of the Rings?  Yeah, most of the time.

In all fairness to Ralph Bakshi, interpretation is a subjective matter of opinion and can be argued to no end.  I couldn't say you're in the wrong for giving the Ringwraiths weird mind control powers over horses.  Technically.  Production value on the other hand, is pretty damn cut and dry.  One might, for example, actually animate an animated film instead of filming live actors and then rotoscoping over them:

Sure, you could argue this is the result of budgetary and technological constraints.  At the same time though, this just feels like a cop out.  Why not produce the majority of the film this way?  It comes off as just plain lazy when, as with Saruman of Many Colors/Names, there is little consistency in its application.  The rotoscoped extras at The Prancing Pony are present throughout the scene, and while it's staged less like a real pub and more like the worst football pregame ever, it looks retro in a bastardized Warhol kind of way.  But when you try to combine that same rotoscoped effect with traditional hand-drawn animation too much, the result is... awkward:

Rotoscoping the Prancing Pony's extras worked because they were reduced to ancillary background characters, just filler and embellishment for the setting.  In the Mines of Moria, the result both sounds and looks bad.  There's nothing wrong with cutting costs, so long as your end product doesn't show it.  In other words, if your orcs look more like cheaply dressed cavemen and grunt like your sound design team was way too drunk and way too tapped of ideas, you're probably pinching too hard.

It might not be fair, but the power of hindsight sure is fun!


I'd be remiss if I failed to acknowledge how much Peter Jackson owes to Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings.  The Hobbits' first encounter with The Black Rider is a great example of this, right down to the staging and sound cues:

The task of adapting Tolkien's mythology to film was a daunting one eleven years ago; I can't imagine how impossible it seemed in 1978.  It's easy to fall into the trap of constant comparison rather than taking the material at face value and accepting it for it is.  In some respects, Bakshi is actually more faithful to the mythology.  For example, he bothers to note that a considerable amount of time passes between Bilbo's departure from the Shire and Frodo embarking on his own journey.  The problem is that an awkward montage of quickly-cut together shots draws more attention to itself than it should.  Some things just aren't conducive to film.  I can't fairly rip on Bakshi's undertaking simply for how bold it must have seemed thirty some odd years ago, but I can't give this a good grade, unless this is one of those experimental schools where you're rewarded stickers for effort instead of quality.

Bakshi's film has no real scale.  Rather than a growing sense of doom, The Lord of the Rings is covered in a constant fog of malaise, like a local access special re-broadcast on PBS.  It's entirely possible that this was Bakshi's intention.  It's also entirely possible that this is just too damn depressing to watch in 2012.


Because I'd like to avoid rebranding this site as "One Blog to Rule Them All," next week marks the beginning of a series of articles in which I show all the ways I rip off Cracked.com.  Cheers!

3 Reasons Why You Were Way Off About Samwise Gamgee

While I love Tolkien's mythology and Peter Jackson's subsequent trilogy, one argument that's always bothered me is how dismissive so many people are of Sam's character.


He's a sissy.  He's a fruitcake.  Aragorn's way cooler.

Yeah?  Aragorn?  Picking Aragorn is like choosing Jesus as your favorite Biblical figure.  Samwise Gamgee on the other hand, is a complex, fascinating character that doesn't get the credit he deserves.  Get ready for some learnin', Mr. Frodo.

3. You're really just calling yourself a cry baby

Let's put The Lord of the Rings into proper perspective.  On its surface, it's great fantasy fiction.  But despite how awesome it might be to watch Legolas take down an oliphant by himself (and it is awesome), the story really isn't about that sort of thing.  It's no mystery that Tolkien hated allegory, however that doesn't mean that his mythology is without its own recurring themes, namely war and death. When Frodo leaves with the Elves for the Grey Havens?  That may as well be a metaphor for dying.

It's like how Saruman is a metaphor for douche bag.

Where am I going with this?  In an epic story with so much death and destruction, the importance of someone like Sam is crucial for the audience because his perspective is the most relatable.  So unless you're a war-hardened ranger or a centuries-old wizard, you really have nothing in common with Aragorn or Gandalf.  Tolkien himself favored Hobbits, despite the inclusion of men in his mythology, which allows the audience to pull back and see the flaws of human beings.  Neat, huh?

Sam as a placeholder for the audience remains true throughout the films, too, even alongside the other three Hobbit companions; Merry and Pippin are much too devil-may-care, and Frodo gradually becomes less sympathetic.  Sam, despite no wartime experience or familiarity with the outside world, is a rational-yet-naive outsider.  Just like us.  This isn't to say that Sam doesn't change as a character, and I'm certainly not arguing that the most relatable characters are always the best ones, but if you rip on Sam for succumbing to hopelessness or crying when his best friend abandons him, you're really just ripping on yourself.  Or, if you'd like to get all high-minded about this, you're insulting what it means to be human.  In the Elvish tongue I believe they call that an "asshole."  

It's a big reason why Tolkien gives the Hobbits all the fun human qualities (smoking and drinking) and all the crappy ones to men (selfishness, weak minds, preserving the existence of evil).  Sam allows us to step back and see those flaws.  At the same time, those flawed characters are relatable because of their weaknesses.  Faramir, Boromir, and Theoden are fascinating because of the internal conflicts they experience.  But what changes does Gandalf undergo aside from a wardrobe change?

More importantly though, why is despair such a bad thing?  Any student of fiction will tell you that the conflicted characters are the most interesting ones.  Maybe Faramir and Theoden don't kick as much ass, but they're much more interesting.  Should we take all emotion out of fantasy, you robots?  We already know what happens when you do that.

Fine, you can have Burt Reynolds.  I'll stick with Sam.

2. Sam isn't gay.  You just have bad friends.

We'll cut this section down and ignore the glaring homophobic implications with this complaint.  Either way though, "Sam it totes gay for Frodo, bro" is complete bullshit.

From what we're shown in the movies, there are exactly two male characters who tie the knot.  The first is Aragorn, and while it's more of an implied matrimony with Arwen, you can be sure they're honeymooning in Rivendell when the credits roll.  The other, of course, is flamin' Sam:

Don't do it, Rosie!  You're marrying a man in denial!

This whole "Sam is gay" thing comes from confusing two kinds of love here: There's love and then there's love love.  In the same way that you love your father or that I love playing Final Fantasy naked, Sam loves Frodo.  That doesn't mean that you'd smack your dad's rear end or try having sex with a video- err.  That doesn't mean that you'd smack your dad's rear end because that's love love.  I think.  And Sam doesn't do any of those things.  In fact, he pretty much exemplifies all the qualities one could want in a best friend:

• Makes dinner

• Stays true to his word

• Fights gigantic spiders

Above all else, Sam sticks with Frodo in spite of the fact that every day Frodo becomes an even bigger dick than before.  So if loyalty, dedication, and blind faith are "gay," then I wish my own friends liked taking it in the Black Gate.

1. Sauron would have won.

That's right.  If it weren't for Sam, the Ring probably wouldn't have been destroyed, and instead of Return of the King's twelve endings, we'd have gotten a sad ass montage of Hobbit slaves.  Bear in mind that I don't subscribe to the idea that the Fellowship was a gigantic waste of time and that Elrond could have just flown into Mordor on Gwaihir the Windlord and plopped the Ring back into Mt. Doom.  To illustrate just how essential Sam is in this, here's a quick breakdown of every instance where he bails out Frodo:

• Fellowship of the Ring
• Sam stops Frodo from putting on the Ring during an encounter with a Ringwraith.
• Two Towers
• Sam stops Frodo from putting on the Ring during an encounter with a Ringwraith.  Again.
• Return of the King
• Despite Frodo telling him to go home, Sam decides to go back and help his friend, even if he does ditch him in favor of following Nicole Richie to Mordor.  It's also worth noting that if Sam hadn't swallowed his pride, none of the following would have happened either...
• Sam kicks Shelob's ass, insuring that Frodo isn't slowly eaten alive.
• Sam rescues Frodo after he's captured by orcs and brought to a guard tower.
• Sam literally puts da team on his back and carries Frodo and the Ring up Mt. Doom
  
  
  
  
  

  
  

• Even after Frodo's umpteenth "fuck you" where he claims the Ring instead of destroying it, Sam saves him from meeting Gollum's fate.

In every one of those instances, the Ring could have easily escaped and found its way into someone else's hands.  That isn't a ridiculous claim.  Consider how easy it was for Bilbo to find the ring in The Hobbit.  He practically tripped onto the thing.

Despite its title, I'll go ahead and say that The Return of the King is as much Sam's story as it is Aragorn's.  I get that Sam likely wouldn't have fared any better if he were in Frodo's position, but that involves way too many hypothetical scenarios to come up with anyway.

Obviously, the climax of the story is only achieved through an ensemble effort, however there are varying degrees of contribution here.  I can only imagine that first conversation between Sam and Pippin in Rivendell:

Wow, what an adventure!  I smoked my body weight in pipe weed and hung out with some talking trees.  What'd you do?


Oh, not much.  Just saved the fucking world.

2011: The Year in Review Pt. II

If you haven't already, take a whiff of 2011's smellier side.

Now, the more fragrant.

The Surprises:

Honorable Mention: Fright Night (Craig Gillespie)

Here's the perfect way to turn off an audience with a trailer:



Those final 30 seconds would have you believe this is the result of some underground experiment where the surgical joining of Breaking Dawn and some shitty Amanda Seyfried caper went horribly wrong.  Complete BS.  Much in the same way Drag Me to Hell delivers exactly what it promises, Fright Night puts 110% into its premise while never taking itself too seriously.  After all, let's face it; "Jerry" really is the worst vampire name ever.

Colin Farrell is awesome in this and not in an ironic, scenery-chewing kind of way.  Fright Night is pure fun, and I'm usually of the belief that "fun" belongs in a movie review about as much as "zesty" belongs in those douchey Olive Garden commercials.  There's only a handful of cheap scares, and unlike what the trailer suggests, Fright Night is really more action-thriller than horror anyway.

At the very least, you can never go wrong with Hugo's cover of "99 Problems."

3. Cedar Rapids (Miguel Arteta)

Miguel Arteta's expose of Midwest America's grubby underbelly would still be a success if you only paid attention to John C. Reilly.



Fortunately, Cedar Rapids is host to a slew of performances that elevate the solid if not groundbreaking material, including Ed Helms' naive insurance salesman, Tim Lippe, and a refreshingly-not-psychotic Anne Heche.

It's strange that Cedar Rapids went unproduced for so long, because its material is hardly foreign territory.  At the same time, the film deserves praise for not simply becoming a comedic vehicle for a recognizable face.  While Helms' path to re-discovery is nothing audiences haven't seen before, the strange mixture of weirdness and whole grain goodness is what provides the spice here.

2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is all about bucking trends.  Of course there's the overt revolutionary themes, and James Franco's Will Rodman sets the course of the franchise in motion by defying corporate orders.  Rise also doesn't care about its more lucid self-references, and it certainly doesn't care that its most important elements aren't even human.  Not completely anyway.

Andy Serkis' Caesar doubly flips the bird to both modern humanity as well as our apparently outdated understanding of acting conventions.  20th Century Fox has hinted at an awards campaign for Serkis, and while selling the apes as real characters is where Rise needed to and absolutely does work, there are too many factors that interfere with a winning Oscar bid here; the most obvious asks where the performance ends and the CGI begins.

Still, Wyatt accomplishes so much more in Rise than Burton's 2001 failed reboot ever does, despite a (relatively) smaller budget and even smaller scope.  While the apes' rebellion is fun to watch and features several ingenious action set pieces, it's actually the quiet, reflective moments that resonate most.  A triumphant Caesar, gazing at the San Francisco skyline from the top of a Redwood, is the focus, not the larger and more devastating effects of human error.

1. Super 8 (J.J. Abrams)

J.J. Abrams loves lens flares more than you could ever learn to love anything in your life, yet he'd still find himself on the positive end of the annual cinematic report card if he released a film every year.  His secret is simple: Don't give the audience the slightest hint as to what you're working on.  In fact, I suspect Abrams' involvement as producer on 2008's Cloverfield amounted to little more than keeping the studio's collective mouth shut about exactly what the fuck was attacking NYC.

Needless to say, the Cloverfield monster exceeded expectations.

It can't be too surprising that Super 8 should find its way to the top of a list about anticipation, but Abrams avoids the Shyamalan trap of becoming a cinematic punchline by crafting a story that's more than just a monster or a twist ending.  Like the "uncanny valley" of CGI, there's a familiar line to straddle when it comes to nostalgia.  Super 8 gracefully taps into the idyllic Spielbergian realm of Abrams' childhood without losing its footing in the sentimental stuff.

I won't argue Super 8 is the best 2011 had to offer, but at the very least, the film deserves credit for what it represents.  It's a testament to the magic of cinema and the allure of the summer blockbuster.  Abrams doesn't give a damn about catering to an audience.  No, we won't be posting production diaries or Twitter updates.  You'll know nothing going into this and you'll like it.

I didn't, and I did.